"It could have escalated into more, but I was too far into my WWE career and that's when we were into the Attitude Era when things were really good; the money was really good, so it was hard to say 'Ok, I'm going to stop doing this, take a chance and start racing and see if I can make it there because if I hadn't made it in racing, then I would have lost out on the Attitude Era, if you understand what I'm saying. I didn't want to take that chance because I was having too much fun during the Attitude Era wrestling and making great money. Of course, it didn't matter where you were on the card; if you were opening match, mid card; of course Main Event makes big money, but even when you were the opening match, you still made great money. So, that would have been really hard to give up to go take a chance in auto racing, where there is no money unless you get to the Cup Level. So, I think I did the best for my career, I did what I wanted to do and I still got to race and stuff like that, so I enjoyed that and I didn't have the stress, the pressure to perform in auto racing. We just did it at the fun level; went to different tracks around the Southeast and there was no pressure or whatever; we just went out there, had a great time and raced and then got on a plane and flew to wherever I had to go wrestle. I did what I wanted to do and I never considered going full-time racing; you gotta be damn good you better have the right people backing you."

His "Spark" Plugg gimmick: "I had graciously bowed out of Smokey Mountain and, like I said, I appreciate Cornette using me and giving me an opportunity to wrestle there. So, I went back to work, and I thought 'You know what? I'm just going to focus on my job; I've got a great job, I make really good money, I've got insurance so I'm set.' And I got my weekends off so I could go race wherever I want to because I had a race car at the time. So, I came home from work one day a couple months down the road and of course there was a message on the machine from J.J. Dillon wanting to talk to me. So, of course, I call him back and I was pretty damn excited, so they arraigned for me to fly up to Connecticut, to meet with him and Vince (McMahon).

"So, I flew up there, met with them and everything; met with them for about an hour and they said 'Ok, we'll send you a contract in the mail within the next week or so.' And I'm like 'Ok, Cool'; I had no idea what my name was going to be, I just thought, you know, I was going to be Bob Holly something or whatever, cause that's the name I've always had And so, I get my contract in the mail and I open it up and the first thing I see is "Thurman 'Sparky' Plugg", and I'm like 'You've GOT to be freaking kidding me!' I'm like 'Wow' but then it sunk in and it's like 'Ok, you know what, it doesn't matter what they call me; I've finally made it to the top, so you just roll with it. A lot of people have made fun of that "Thurman 'Sparky' Plugg" but they were in the same position, they would not have turned WWE down because of the name, I guarantee that! I thought you know, because everything back then was cartoon characters-type gimmicks and I just thought well, this is just something of that or whatever because I was a race car driver that they wanted to go with that. And J.J. Dillon was the one who actually came up with the name. But again, I'm also thankful for that name; yeah, I didn't like it but it gave me my start to a long career in WWE. So, it's kinda embarrassing but then again I'm kinda thankful for that, also. And then I thought, well, let me get my foot in the door and hopefully I'll get comfortable in stuff where I can approach Vince and say 'Hey, can we do something about this?'